Book Review: STUCK- a keeper....definitely.

On a superficial level, I love this study. 

On a leadership level, I love this study. 

On a personal level, I love this study. 

On a spiritual level, I love this study. 

Jennie Allen nailed it when she wrote her 8 week group study entitled Stuck. The series comes with an 8 session DVD, a leaders guide, a participants guide, and a deck of cards. 

The deck of cards were my favorite. 

Allen gives group guidelines for her study. One of her rules for group discussion is to not counsel one another. If you’ve ever been in a group discussion with more than 2 women, you should know why she wants to limit playing counselor for the others. Everyone always has an idea to solve your problem, a solution to your worries and instructions on how to live the perfect life. But why the deck of cards?

As a task oriented person, the cards make my heart soar. Each week has 10 cards which correspond to the week’s topic. Each card is different and ranges in activities from reading a scripture to the group, asking a discussion question for the group, answering a thought provoking question or some other task. The cards give the group participants some authority as to how much she shares with others and the level of participation. Having a card in your hand is much like having a table in front of you....it’s a little piece of safety from the invasive feelings some experience when sharing personal information. Cards also give the quiet ones a chance to speak if they wish and prevents trampling from too-well-known Chatty Cathy. 

Allen’s DVD is enjoyable and she is easy to listen to. The settings are different each week and she positions herself as if she is talking directly to you- across the table, in the grocery isle, etc. Each clip is about 8 minutes long. While watching, I became so interested in what she was saying, I lost track of time and always wanted her to keep going. Her sweet spirit shines through and I wish I knew her personally- she would be a deep and valuable friend. 

As for the topics covered in the study, Allen writes/talks about places we get STUCK in our relationship with God- broken, mad, discontent, scared, overwhelmed, sad, unstuck. For some of these topics, I felt it didn’t apply to me BEFORE I listened and read.....but each time, I found that I saw myself in the discussions. Her questions, her personal stories, the scriptures she used.....they all pulled something out in me that resonated so clearly in my own heart. Ouch. 

Because of the way her study is organized, I feel this would fit any level of intimacy a group currently experiences- a newly established group would benefit from the use of the cards and the optional input exercises, while a group that deeply knows one another can press farther with the hard questions and personal stories. 

Thanks Thomas Nelson for a chance to read and review this study in exchange for a free copy! If you want to snag your own copy, click here. 

You can check out Jennie’s site @ http://jennieallen.com/projects/stuck or catch a glimpe of one her videos, right here:

Book Review: The Christian Writer's Market Guide 2012- a keeper

Imagine being a writer and needing to know who to call for editors, publishers, contests and not knowing where to look. Your searches on Google end up with the crafty business person’s eye-catching website and writing classes for the local middle school age homeschool co-op. Frustration oozes from your fingertips. This amazing article hibernates on your hard drive while potential periodical editors hunt for something great to publish. How can the two become one? Is it possible for the perfect match to be found? Unlikely....Possible....Maybe?

*Cue end of drama.*

This heavenly made match can be completed with the help of Jerry Jenkin’s 2012 Christian Writers Market Guide. Jerry B. Jenkin’s Christian Writers Guild compiled information from hundreds of publishers, agents, contests, writers’ groups, conference locations and dates and topics of interests. This book is like the White Pages of the writing world. I bought my first copy in 2009 and used it as a guide to navigate new territory. By flipping through the pages, I was able find useful information for publishing....but I also found encouragement to write. This tool is 552 pages of potential outlets for writing. Even though the publishing world seems to be caving in right now, there are still writers landing jobs! It’s motivating to skim through the Guide and see the areas on interest still available for writers. 

If your amazing article or book is still hibernating on your hard drive and you’d like to wake it, grab yourself a copy of The 2012 Christian Writers Market Guide. It’s somewhat pricey ($24.99), but if you look at it as an investment in your yearly writing career, then it isn’t so bad. 

Thanks Tyndale for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! 

Because you asked....

A few people have asked for my granola and protein bar/balls recipes, so I am posting them here! Some of my recipes aren't "mine" at all, I simply found them online and won't take credit for it. I'll give you the link to go grab it from the original source.

I used Alton Brown's recipe for both granola and crunchy granola bars. You can get the recipe for his granola by clicking HERE and his bar recipe HERE. Head's up though....be sure to take those bars out of the oven at the appropriate time. If you leave them in there just a tad too long, your bars become too crunchy to bite comfortably. As with all my recipes, I substitute a lot and often just use what I have on hand. Alton calls for a large quantity of dried fruit, which I just swap for raisins, craisins, coconut flakes....or whatever I have.

Here's my chewy granola bar recipe:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups quick rolled oats
1/4 cup flax seed
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 1/2 cup extras (peanuts, chocolate chips, raisins, dried fruit, coconut, etc.)
Mix first 5 ingredients well. Add remaining ingredients until completely mixed. Press
hard and evenly into a 9x13 greased pan. Bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes. Cool. Flip out
onto cutting board. Cut into bars. Wrap individually. Will keep in pantry for 2 weeks.




Here's my Energy/Protein Ball recipe:

1 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup peanut butter (or other nut butter)

1/3 cup honey

1 cup coconut flakes

1/2 cup ground flaxseed

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything above in a medium bowl until thoroughly incorporated.  Let chill in the refrigerator for half an hour.  Once chilled, roll into balls and enjoy!  Store in an airtight container and keep refrigerated for up to 1 week.

**When I made these most recently, I didn't have mini chocolate chips or flaxseed, so I substituted sunflower seeds and crunched up M&M's. The pops of color brought into the mix made it quite cute. I toted these around with us the day we did our home inspection, which kept my family from wilting during the 2 hour process. ;-)

Can you think of other recipes you'd like to check out? Let me know. If I don't have one already, I'll experiment and report back to you! 

*************POST UPDATE************

I wanted to share an example of my substitution habits with you. A few days ago, I needed to make a double batch of the Energy Ball mentioned above....but as usual, I did not have all the ingredients listed. So I swapped things out for other things. Here is what I ended up using instead:

2 cups oatmeal

1 cup peanut butter

2/3 cup agave 

2 cup coconut flakes

1 cup chopped baked almonds

1 cup chopped white chocolate flavored candy (AKA almond bark)

2 tsp vanilla

For recipe swaps to work, the key is to keep the ratio of dry goods to sticky goods the same....and it will probably work out! I didn't mind the taste of the original recipe, the rest of the family thought they were good. However, we all LOVED this combination. 

Banton food budget secrets revealed!

So, a few people have asked me to share my coupon techniques. The sad part is that in light of the recent extreme couponing tv shows, I run from advertising my strong satisfaction of couponing. I have watched one episode and felt torn. On one hand, I am amazed at the time, calculator punching, and down-to-the-dollar shopping they do. On the other hand, I am saddened by their need to get so much for free. 

But this post isn’t about the show. It’s about how I make our food budget work. 

My numbers will reflect Virginia prices, since I haven’t fully stocked a pantry, fridge and freezer in Connecticut yet. I also haven’t been cooking like I normally do because of our temporary living situation. I hope to kick this back into high gear once we get settled into our own place. Eventually, I will update on the changes CT has brought our grocery strategy.

My family of four (plus one dog and whomever walks through my front door any given month) currently eat on $275/month. I used to clip and clip coupons. Eventually, I found that I only used a few of them because they expired or the generic item was cheaper than the other brand even with the savings. I will admit to creating and using a coupon notebook to keep things organized, but even that is much slimmer than anything you see on tv. 

My shopping needed to change from a reaction to prices to proactive planning and cooking. I can’t make the stores sell things for what I need them to, but I can do what I can and adjust accordingly. 

Here’s a rundown on my rules for grocery shopping:

• Prepare to shop once for the month, plus one or two other small trips for more milk, fruit, etc. I know ahead of time what I will make for the month, so I purchase the necessary ingredients for those meals. This shopping trip usually takes about 1 hour of walking fast through a familiar store, selecting almost exactly the same items each month. 
• I pray before I go. We live off of money that churches and individuals have given, so I filter my purchases through this self-imposed accountability system. Before I leave my car, I pray that God will extend my dollars and make it stretch for the month. He hasn’t left me hangin’ so far. 
• I don’t browse- except clearance/dent&ding racks. I know what I need in the store, so I go in and get it. I do leave a few things open ended. For instance, I will purchase whatever fresh fruit and vegetables are the cheapest- this typically means apples and grapes, but sometimes I can find others that are similarly priced. For the clearance racks, if I find something that I normally use, don’t normally use but can think of use for it, or have wanted to try, I will grab that too. Sometimes this puts me over budget by a few dollars, but over the course of several months, I think it evens out. 
• I buy generic almost all the time. Most stores offer a 100% money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with their version of the product. In most cases, I find that the generic works just as well. Once, I found a small piece of metal in Walmart’s Great Value macaroni noodles. I called the number on the box to report it and was sent a check for the number of boxes I purchased that day and a load of coupons for free macaroni from another brand. For the few items I really enjoy having another brand, I do search for coupons- such a Yoplait yogurt, Breyers ice cream, the brand of agave I like, Pillsbury cake mixes and Betty Crocker brownie mix. I also buy the cereal in the bags, but will clip a coupon for the mainline brands then watch for a sale. 
• I hate to pay full price for anything, so I wait for sales if I can. 
• If I can make it, I do. Almost every time, I have found that homemade goods are cheaper and SO MUCH HEALTHIER than the store bought versions. Example: granola and granola bars. For under $2.00, I can make 24 granola bars! At the store, the nice brand of bars are more than $2.00 for 8 bars. Can’t beat that and my husband and kids prefer the homemade ones, hands down. I make my own cake icing (most of the time), corn bread, scalloped potatoes, cookie dough, yogurt, cold pasta salads, desserts, and most of our snacks. I have never purchased chicken or vegetable stock from a store, since I make it from home. I love knowing what’s in my food and getting it cheaper! This means that a bulk of my dry goods money is spent on things like a variety of flours, sugars, yeast, corn meal, dried beans, rice, oats, dried fruits and nuts, etc. Another way this “if I can make it, I do” theory applies is to vegetables- I don’t buy anything already prepared, so I peel and slice my own carrot sticks (imagine that!) and chop my own celery. The savings is huge. If there is something I don’t know how to make, I figure it out. It took me a solid month of daily biscuit making to figure out how to turn my hockey pucks into something edible. Youtube is an amazing cooking coach....as well as having some pretty rockin’ mennonites nearby to teach me the old tricks of the trade. 
• I cook strategically. When I plan out my meals (which are pretty much the same every month now), I try to think about what could have or was made 100 years ago. Most likely, the meals were healthier (no preservatives, chemicals, etc.) and the ingredients are almost always cheaper. (I know many people are strapped for time after a long workday, so they need quick meals. However, I think, with some creativity, it can be done. This is how we’ve figured it out to work for us.) In addition to the better quality meals and savings, the older recipes seem to be easier to beef up for more mouths to feed. For instance, it easy to add more of a few raw vegetables to the sides of the big pot of roasted chicken before you throw it in the oven and an extra cup of rice to the bowl when you find out unexpected guests are on their way. 
• I cook strategically, part 2. We don’t eat expensive foods. I have a hard time cooking a meal that costs me more than $2/person to prepare. My goal is to keep dinners to under $10, with leftovers for lunch the next day for (at least) my husband. On special occasions, such as birthday dinners or holidays, I will splurge a little more and enjoy the fancier things...think Little House on the Prairie style. Let me give you a real-life scenario that I do every month. With the whole chicken I purchased, I will get 3 meals+ by using it well. Meal #1 is roasted chicken with veg&rice. In the roasting pan with the whole chicken, I will fill the sides with carrots, celery, potatoes and onions. The four of us will eat about 2/3 of the meat and almost all of the veggies for that meal. After the chicken cools, I pick the remaining meat from the bones and use it for a casserole, chicken salad, tacos, soup, or something similar that leaves leftovers again.  Lastly, I will either use the juices (AKA stock) from around the roasted chicken for a meal or freeze it in a ziplock for a later soup, delicious rice, etc. Out of a $4 chicken, plus some other ingredients, I served a family a four at least 3 times. Pretty good, eh?
• I cook strategically, part 3. I find many recipes call for arm loads of expensive ingredients that I’m not willing to part with for that meal or pay for to begin with. I will either replace it with something cheaper, but similar or ignore it altogether. One example of this is a taco casserole (sometimes called a Chuckwagon Casserole). This might sound obsessively cheap to some, but I can’t handle using an entire pound of ground beef for a chuckwagon casserole. If I’m going to use a whole pound of beef, it better be for something I can sink my teeth into- like an awesome hamburger! So, for the chuckwagon, I use a half pound of ground beef and add extra beans + a beef bouillon for filler. There is one place in which I will not use the cheaper version- BUTTER. I will never substitute margarine when the recipe calls for butter. #1, margarine is gross and fake. #2, it probably won’t work in the recipe anyway. I would rather not make the cookies than cheat there. 
• Buy in bulk.....but only if it’s cheaper. I found stores like Sam’s sometimes hope we aren’t looking and hike the price on an item that Walmart sells cheaper. Personally, the things I buy in bulk are: dog food, laundry soap, dishwasher soap, apple juice, boneless/skinless chicken breasts, 2 pound blocks of cheese, rice, milk, eggs, printer paper (I like their quality!), whole/fresh chickens, and (sometimes) their cheapest fruit. 
• I became a student of the stores. I pay attention to how stores price their items. However, most of the time, I just grab the store flyers and head to Walmart to price match. In my town in VA, we only had 2 grocery stores other than wally-world, but if I found a Target ad....or ANY store that had an ad with something cheaper, I saved it and brought it to Walmart with me. If it was still “good” or within the dates written on the ad, Walmart honored it (except on buy one, get one free sales). 
• When it's gone, it's gone. When we run out of something before the pay period ends, most of the time we just wait. Since I have usually spent our entire food budget by that point, there is nothing left in the "envelope" and I fight the urge to go get more. This is when it gets really tough to tell my girls that we will just have to wait for more ______ and that we'll be ok with it. Heading back to the store to get more of something slowly increases the food spending. If I notice that we are lacking that item at the end of the month for a few months, I will make space in the food budget to buy more and accommodate. It may not be a big deal in the long run, but this is a discipleship issue and (I feel) it teaches my girls to get over their human need to satisfy their want immediately. This rule gets hard when I have unexpected guests coming and I want to prepare a huge meal with all the fancy sides or desserts. My internal battle becomes a pride issue and I usually end up asking myself a few questions...."before I knew I was having guests, I was willing to serve my family our planned meal. And if I'm ok with them eating this, why wouldn't I be ok with serving it to someone else?" Then I realized that the people coming over are usually in one of two catagories: Either they are coming over because they like us despite what we are eating, or they are coming over to eat (our college students) and don't care what it is other than it being safely consumable.  
• I have a Master Shopping List and Monthly Meal Plan tailored to us. There are several examples online. 
• Lastly, I don’t typically buy cleaners like windex, specialty floor cleaners or bathroom cleaners. Armed with bleach, baking soda and vinegar, I can clean almost any surface in my house. Google the uses of baking soda and you’ll be amazed at the savings your 75 cent box of baking soda can provide. One of my splurges is for the dish washing liquid that is easier on my hands! I do buy disposable things like ziplock bags, but not too frequently. I try to save those for freezing messy foods (like chicken stock or meats) and use my good supply of tupperware bowls for food storage and transport. 

Disregard the appearance, please!

If anyone is actually reading this, please ignore the weird look of the blog. I am testing out a few design skillz. (z is intentional) What do you think?

Book Review- Thank You, God, for blessing me (ebook)

I recently snagged a copy a copy of the ebook Thank You God, For Blessing Me by Max Lucado, part of the Hermie series. 

I like the little poem about different things to be thankful for. That’s it. Perhaps it was due to glitches in the ebook world, but the book turned out to be only 3 pages and had very tiny pictures. It seemed that several regular pages had been smashed into one with shrunken pictures. Despite the pictures being small, they were cute. My kids liked them. 

The poem was short and my kids (3 & 5) could have sat longer for a more in-depth story. So, this book would best be for much younger kids...maybe even in a chewable format for the littlest babies to teethe on! 

My kids also wished the book read out loud to them, as some other ebooks do. Maybe Tommy Nelson can add that feature to their children’s ebooks? 

If you get the book, get an actual copy of it- not an ebook version! 

Thanks Booksneeze for this free download. I gave my honest opinion in exchange for this review. 

2 things

1. If you'd like, jump over to my other blog and check out my Top 10 Reasons I Enjoy Itinerating!

2. I have a free copy of Faith & Culture to give away. Zondervan sent me a second copy by mistake and now I can give it to YOU! If you'd like to have it, leave a comment and I will pick a winner later this week! You can read my review of it here.